What does man seek in religion, and what should he seek in it? How does God reveal Himself in order to bring man to a knowledge of the Truth? How does suffering help this revelation to occur? These and other questions were discussed by Fr. Seraphim Rose, an Orthodox Christian monk from the mountains of northern California, during a lecture he gave at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1981. The contents of this lecture comprise God's Revelation to the Human Heart. Drawing from a variety of sources -- the Holy Scriptures, patristic writings, the lives of both ancient and modern saints, and accounts of persecuted Christians behind the Iron Curtain -- Fr. Seraphim goes to the core of all Christian life: the conversion of the heart of man, which causes it to bum with love for Christ and transforms one into a new being.

When Fr. Seraphim found out that the early Western Father, Blessed Augustine of Hippo, was being attacked in contemporary Eastern Orthodox circles, then he--himself a Western convert to Orthodoxy--rose in his defense. This book is the outcome. Fr. Seraphim said he wrote it in the hope that it would help remove Augustine as a scapegoat for today's academic theologians, and thus "help free us all to see his and our own weaknesses in a little closer light--for his weaknesses, to a surprising degree, are indeed close to our own." After discussing Blessed Augustine's strengths and weaknesses, Fr. Seraphim examines the opinions of other Holy Fathers concerning him. "His main benefit to us today," he writes, "is probably precisely as a Father of Orthodox pietysomething with which he was filled to overflowing. Here he is one with the simple Orthodox faithful, as well as with all the Holy Fathers of East and West who, whatever their various failings and differences in theoretical points of doctrine, had a single deeply Christian heart and soul. It is this that makes him unquestionably an Orthodox Father." This new edition of The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church contains letters written by Fr. Seraphim concerning Augustine, passages from Augustine's Confessions which Fr. Seraphim found especially moving, and an Orthodox service to Blessed Augustine, commissioned by St. John Maximovitch.

"In 1962, the young Eugene Rose undertook to write a monumental chronicle of the abandonment of Truth in the modern age. Of the hundreds of pages of material he compiled for this work, only the present essay, on Nihilism, has come down to us in completed form. Here Eugene reveals the core of all modern thought and life--the belief that all truth is relative--and shows how this belief has been translated into action in our era. Today, nearly half a century after he wrote it, this essay is more timely than ever. It clearly explains why contemporary ideas, values, and attitudes--the "spirit of the age"--are shifting so rapidly in the direction of moral anarchy, as the philosophy of Nihilism enters more deeply into the fiber of society. Nietszche was right when he predicted that the twentieth century would usher in "the triumph of Nihilism."--Back cover.

For Orthodox Christians, Fr. Seraphim Rose is a voice crying in the wilderness. His words have rekindled the love of countless Orthodox for the Church of their fathers. Orthodox all over the world regard him as a saintly prophet and spiritual giant.Cathy Scott, Fr. Seraphim's niece, has collected 140 of his private letters, never published before and incorporated them in this magnificent new biography that traces Fr. Seraphim's intellectual journey, chronicling the deep spiritual search that led him to the Orthodox Faith. Containing 36 color photographs.Seraphim Rose: The True Story and Private Letters is the moving account of a spiritual passage from secular behavior and philosophy to vibrant faith and saintly monastic asceticism. Cathy shares the memories of the family of Fr. Seraphim -- or, as they knew him, Eugene. The book includes over 30 color and black and white photographs. In Seraphim Rose we share in one of the most inspiring spiritual pilgrimages of our time.

Blessed John (1896-1966) is believed by Orthodox Christians all over the world to be the holiest man of the 20th century. Manifesting many contrasting forms of sanctity, he was at one a God-inspired theologian and a "Fool-for-Christ", a zealous missionary hierarch and a feeder of the poor, a severe ascetic and a loving father to orphans. A man of intense and cease. less prayer, he was a genuine Holy Elder in the tradition of the great Russian startsi. Piercing the veil of time and space, he would mystically hear and answer people's thoughts before they would express them. This edition contains numerous source-materials on Blessed John's life, a pictorial biography and one hundred personal testimonies of his sanctity.

Perhaps no other religious topic has engaged the human mind and heart so completely as the fate of the soul after death. In this spiritual and ultimately humane investigation, Fr. Seraphim Rose presents the principal beliefs of the early church fathers and then reaches beyond the Christian tradition to examine ideas drawn from The Tibetan Book of the Dead, the writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg, the "astral plane" of Theosophy, the out-of-body experiences of Robert Monroe, and the spiritual encounters of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. This is a comprehensive treatment of a subject that touches every human heart.

"Christ the eternal Tao shows Lao Tzu's Tao Teh Ching as a foreshadowing of what would be revealed by Christ, and Lao Tzu himself as a Far-Eastern prophet of the Incarnate God."--Back cover